


Homemade

by zeldadestry



Category: Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger
Genre: POV First Person, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-19
Updated: 2010-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 18:42:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phoebe's waiting on Holden for a car ride home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homemade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cosmia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmia/gifts).



Boarding school is ok and all. I mean I’m not crazy about it, or anything, but I certainly don’t hate it like Holden did. There are plenty of things about it I even really like. My dorm’s painted lavender with dark purple trim, for one, so it looks like a kid’s dollhouse suddenly became life-sized. And then there’s the music building, which has like twelve little rooms, each one with a piano, so if you walk by it on a warm day, after classes are over, you’ll hear a dozen different songs drifting out through the open windows, all running together in a cascade of notes. And then there’s my roommate, Simone, who is from Montreal and always helps me with my French homework and invited me to visit her this summer. Anytime, she said, you can stay with us anytime, for as long as you want, ok? Because she’s nice, Simone, you know? Not just, oh, I want people to like me and give me things so I better be nice and give them things right back, no, she’s not that sort of nice, which is more a business transaction than real goddam sympathy, if you ask me. She’s the kind of nice that if you fell down in front of her, ok, like if it were winter and you were rushing to get to a class on time, and you slipped on a patch of ice in front of the steps of the English building, Simone would be the first person to hurry over and help you back up to your feet. And she’d probably have tears in her eyes, or maybe she’d be laughing a little bit, but never in a mean way, only because she was so relieved you weren’t hurt, and she’d help you get your hat on straight, and brush the snow off the front of your coat, and stand there watching until you made it safely inside. And then, when you’d pass by her later, like in line at the dining hall, or in the stacks of the library during study hall, she wouldn’t say anything, she’d just give you a little smile, so sweet it’d make you blush, and you’d feel warm all over, like now you shared a special secret with her. Yeah, she’s that kind of nice.

So, it’s not home, or anything, but I am happy here.

I’m not often happy at home, actually, but home is still the most important place, right? I mean, home is my, and Holden’s, and D.B.’s rooms exactly as we left them the last time we were there, and my father’s papers spread out all over his office, and my mother sneaking a smoke alone in the kitchen, but always stubbing it out before anyone can catch her, so that if you look in the garbage you’ll see a dozen discarded cigarettes, none of them burned down more than halfway.

Holden’s supposed to pick me up today and we’re going to drive to the city together, and it’s pretty much what I’ve been looking forward to the most about the holidays. All of my friends left this morning, or last night, because classes ended at noon yesterday, and right now things are pretty calm, after all the flurry of last minute packing and arrangements.

As much as I want to see Holden, though, waiting for him to get here is pretty good, too. It’s nice to sit outside in the winter, as long as it isn’t too cold, and be happy that the sun is shining. And there’s nothing sad about being all alone, with my little suitcase beside me, when I know that my brother’s on his way here, that we’ll be together soon.

Each time I hear a car approaching in the distance, I stand up and then have to sit back down again when I see it turn around the corner and it’s not the old Jaguar D.B. passed down to Holden. I tease Holden all the time about driving that car, because he complained for years about how ridiculous and flashy it was, and who the hell did D.B. think he was going to impress by paying that much for it, and now it’s his. I tease him, but I can’t call him a hypocrite, I mean, he wanted a car and D.B. gave it to him for free, who wouldn’t take it? D.B. never bothered to name the jaguar figure on the hood, but the first thing Holden did when he inherited the car was ask me what we should call it. I was reading “Great Expectations” at the time and suggested Estella. I always give her a pat for good luck before I get in.

When he finally does arrive, I’m not even looking in the right direction. My dorm mother’s walking out the front door, holding her baby boy in her arms, and I’m focused on the little blue pompom on top of his hat, and how his tiny fingers clutch at his mom’s breast, and listening to his ba-ba-ba babble. And that’s when I hear, “Hey, sis.”

“Holden!” I leap to my feet, honestly, I even knock over my suitcase, and run to him.

He hugs me tight, rocks me back and forth, and side to side, saying, “Little sis, little sis, you been taking good care of yourself, huh?” He holds me at arm’s length. “All in one piece, yeah?” He looks down at my hands. “I see ten fingers, that’s good.” He puts his feet on either side of my own. “You got ten toes down there underneath your boots?”

“Last time I counted.”

He cups his hands around my ears. “Where’s your hat? You could catch your death out here.”

“I’m not cold at all, I promise.”

“Alright.” He steps forward and picks up my suitcase. “This all ya got?”

“Yup.” He puts my bag in the back seat and then holds the passenger door open for me. “Thanks,” I say, patting Estella when I walk past her. I slide into the car and he closes the door carefully and I watch him as he settles in to the driver’s seat. When he pulls off his hat, I can see even more gray hair than last time.

“So,” he says, as we drive away from my dorm, “this place doesn’t look so bad. Better than the dumps I went to.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty good.” He slows down as we pass the graveyard where the founder of the school and his immediate family are buried. It’s surrounded by a slowly crumbling waist high brick wall. “I took some photographs there,” I tell him.

“Yeah, you wrote me about it, I remember.” He jerks a thumb towards my bag. “Did you bring some prints with you? I wanna see them.”

“Yeah, I brought my portfolio.”

He grins. “Oh, a portfolio, huh? We’ve got an artist in the family.”

“I don’t know about that. I just like it, you know? I like how sometimes the picture comes out exactly how I thought it would and other times it’s different. That’s what I like best, how sometimes it feels like a perfect record of what I saw, and other times it’s like it shows me something I missed, something I wouldn’t have ever noticed otherwise. Is writing like that?”

“It can be,” Holden says. “I mean, when you sit down and if you just go, you know, if you don’t stop all the time to think about where you’re going and what you want to say, yeah, sometimes by the time you’re done it’s like a whole new story, one you never even thought to tell yourself before.”

“Still working on the same novel?”

Holden taps his fingers against the steering wheel. “Nah, chucked it, started something new.”

“Oh. I liked the old one.”

“Sorry, old sport. But it’s good, the new one, it’s different, you’ll see.”

“But, Holden, if you never finish anything, if you always start another project before you’re done with the previous one-”

“Come on, Phoeb, is that really such a bad fate? It’s how I wrote in the loony bin, actually.”

“Oh god, don’t call it that.”

“Ok, buddy, fine, in the sanitarium, like that’s any better. Anyway, I would just write, write whatever I wanted, as much as I wanted. You know, when Oscar Wilde was in Reading Gaol, they only gave him one sheet of paper a day.”

“I think that counts as cruel and unusual punishment for a writer, but I guess it’s still better than no paper at all.”

“Yeah.”

“I thought I was shooting a whole roll, once, but when I got to the end, I realized I’d never loaded the camera.”

Holden laughs. “But you didn’t regret setting up and taking those pictures, right?”

“Not at all.”

“It was still worth it?”

“Yes.”

“Good for you,” he says, stretching over a hand to pat my knee. “Good for you.”

I poke him in the side. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a dumb kid.”

“You’ll always be my little sis.”

“Don’t remind me. Does that mean that, even if I live to a hundred and six, you’ll always think of me as a nine year old?”

“Nope. Just means I’ll always be your big brother. Think you can live with that?”

“With you looking out for me for the next ninety years? Definitely.”


End file.
